To Raw Or Not To Raw

No, not like a Lion, like a camera! For the last 18 months I've resisted shooting in raw for the following reasons.

1. I don't like faffing about on the computer.
2. Instantly halves the number of pictures I can fit on a card.
3. When I first tried in camera editing on my D90, it ate all my pictures.
4. I don't manipulate my images much, aside from cropping and contrast.

I gave it another go last weekend, early morning in the hide with the sun coming right at me so the resulting images were all partly in shadow. I've just got round to loading the images and have processed them.

Now don't laugh, but I use Picasa 3, it's free and I like it! This shot of a Female House Sparrow has just had the auto-contrast and the fill-light treatment to sort out the shadows and to my untrained eye it looks good enough for me.

The ease with which I can muck about with the images in Picasa and then undo everything is great. So for now at least I'll stick with raw images and see how it goes.

Paul.

Getting Closer

I've been working on the new bird area again this weekend, planted a cherry tree, planted an acer tree, sprayed the two sheds (one of which is now a bird hide), scattered loads of flower seeds, started digging a pond and used the top soil to cover the seeds.

After getting all that done, I staggered up the garden with the bird bath and put that in it's new location too. Then I crawled on my knees to get the camera and had an hour or so in the hide.

Juvenile Blackbird

Juvenile Starling

Juvenile Blue Tit

Still early days yet, but very promising and thankfully most of the back breaking work is done.

Paul.

Mystery Raptor At The Patch

Took Debbie to visit my new local patch yesterday because of the abundance of butterflies and saw this raptor being mobbed in the distance.

Any ideas what this could be?

**Update**

Thanks to everyone's suggestions from the blog world, Twitter and Flickr, the consensus seems to be Common Buzzard and I think this shot from
Northhamptonshire Wildlife nails it.


Paul.

New Bird Area

The location where we had the bird feeders was getting increasingly messy and unsightly so I've been in the process of moving the bird area up to the top of the garden, were the mess can be contained.

This is where a very old greenhouse once stood and the brick wall perimeter is ideal for keeping the area confined to where it should be.

Because this is now such a long way from the kitchen window, I've converted one of the sheds to a bird hide, where I can, hopefully, get quite close to the action. There is still much to do, I've got loads of wildflower seeds to scatter and cover with top soil. The top soil is coming from an area out of shot where the wildlife pond will be going. It should look good when it's finished, at the moment, it's a bit of a mess!

I've had a try out in the hide this morning and it seems to work quite well, although I need to get a tree in between the two feeding stations to provide perches and natural photo opportunities.

Starlings

Juvenile House Sparrow

Juvenile Starling

Juvenile Goldfinch

Juvenile Greenfinch (I think!)

Goldfinch

Since moving the bird area, we're getting more Goldfinch and the Blue Tits have started visiting for the first time in ages.

Paul.

Wyming Brook

We visited Wyming Brook near Sheffield on Saturday, it's not that far from us and we never knew it was there! Debbie got loads of pictures, you can see a selection here.

It's perfect Dipper country, with a fast flowing stream under dense woodland, everything is green and covered in moss, it's almost like a jungle.

The resident I was after appeared after about 5 minutes and then so did a party of city folk who insisted on organising a group photo with Tiddles while I watched on desperately as the Dipper flitted back an forth behind them.

Dipper

So only a record shot this time, but I'll be back and at a time that's too early for Tiddles and the gang!

Paul

Flamborough Head

So we abandoned Spurn Point and drove up the coast to Flamborough Head, North Landing. Here there were birds, lots of birds and not a flippin caterpillar in sight!

Kittiwakes

Herring Gull

Rock Doves

Razorbills

Puffins

Puffin

Puffin

Puffins & Razorbills (Taken By Debbie)

Herring Gull (Taken by me with Debbie's Canon EOS 1000D)

So two lifers in one visit, Puffin and Rock Dove, really enjoyed it here and wish we could have spent more than a couple of hours exploring, we'll be going back again soon.

Yet another lifer today, but that's another post, maybe tomorrow, we've been to so many places and seen so much this week, I just can't post fast enough!

Paul.

Spurn Point

The trip to Spurn Point on Friday was a bit of a let down, birds were outnumbered a million to one by poisonous furry caterpillars.

We met a nice lady who worked at one of the offices at the point, she was really helpful and filled us in on the area. From that point on it quickly went downhill fast, we could take no more than two steps without standing on a Tiger Moth caterpillar, they were everywhere. I wish we had seen this BBC Look North story before deciding to go.

Spurn Lifeboat

Pilot Boat

We made it a short way down down the beach before Debbie started struggling, feeling unwell and she headed back to the car.

Spurn Point

I kept going for another 5 minutes but decided to turn back, just as I turned round, I spotted something moving in the sea, a Seal!

Seal

Seal

The only decent shot of a bird I got was this one and I'm not even sure what it is, probably a Knot but my wader identification is a bit ropey.

Sanderling
Thank's to The Early Birder for the ID of this little brown wading job.

We left Spurn and headed for Flamborough which saved the day but that's another post.